The Artifact
by Moonraker One
Summary: ADVENTURERS THROUGH TIME BEWARE: The Artifact can have an effect on time far more powerful than even the Chrono Trigger. Do NOT misuse, and word wishes VERY carefully. COMPLETE.
1. CHAPTER ONE

The Artifact

By Moonraker One

PROLOGUE

"I am forever in your debt for rescuing my wife, Leene," exclaimed the King of Guardia, whose worst nightmare had been settled in the best possible way. He could not thank whatever god ruled from Heaven for delivering the punk-haired teenager to his step, for the unlikeliest of heroes came through in the clutch where soldiers failed. "However can we repay you?"

With a broad smile on his face, Crono replied, "Don't worry about it, sire. I'm just glad this whole ordeal's over with." A truer statement he couldn't have said. Despite the fact that rescuing Queen Leene of the middle ages and Princess Nadia of the present being the most excitement he'd had in quite a long time, he didn't like very much of it. Now, the trio had been gathered and were prepared to return to the present.

"I…I failed you," Frog said to the royalty he served. What got to him was that he didn't predict the enemy's movements and actions in regards to the queen. Turning his back to them, he solemnly headed towards the exit. Crono, however, stopped him halfway down the stairs. Unfortunately, his words would not get through to the amphibian knight. He turned to his temporary comrade in arms. "Thou art a good swordsman and kind of heart, but I am a failure." Marle moved in front of Lucca to see who was talking, and shrieked when her eyes met the biggest frog she'd ever seen. Frog ignored her frightened cry. "Your resemblance to the queen is uncanny." Quietly, he strolled away.

Lucca couldn't help but smile as she lowered her head out of respect. "Froggy," she whispered, "you weren't such a bad guy." Pressed for time, the heroes left the castle.

The clear grass plains came after the semi-thick Guardia forest, creating a noticeable feeling of nostalgia from the trio of Marle, Lucca and Crono as they ambled on towards the hill. It didn't take too much in the area of struggling against enemies in order to make it to the point where they arrived in this time period, so their trek quickly came to an end when they arrived at the gate.

CHAPTER ONE - A Mysterious Pyramid…Surrounded by eyes…

This certain day would mark a special occurrence in Lucca's life.

Never before had she gone backwards in time in order to correct a problem. For that matter, never before had she gone backwards in time. Her calm, quiet room awaited her as she entered the door to the house she had lived in since birth. Taban, her father, sat at the table, finishing a project he'd put off for what seemed to be forever. She waved to him as she dashed through the door that led to the stairs to her room. "I'm gonna work on something, and then I'm gonna go see a friend. Okay dad?" her question seemed out of place, at least in Taban's eyes, for he never worried about where she'd gone in the past. Lucca just happened to be one of the kids that never caused trouble.

At the moment she moved her hand to open the door, a series of events transpired all at once. In the time it took her to reach for her doorknob, a purple-colored time gate opened up directly over her bed, dropped a small artifact and a piece of paper, then vanished as though it never existed. When she opened her door, it wasn't the first thing she saw. _Ah, my beautiful, disorganized room,_ she thought. _Many an experiment had been conducted here._ A sparkle at the corner of her vision grasped her attention, turning it to the bed. The small piece of paper that had been ravaged by time still had one part of it readable; in a language she could read—she believed it to be Arabic—the paper read, "The Artifact can have a powerful effect on time. Even more so than the Chrono Trigger. Do NOT misuse, and try to word wishes carefully." Chrono Trigger? Wishes? This seemed hard to believe or understand, at least to Lucca. Somehow, though, when she turned the golden-colored pyramid in her hand—its size was remarkably small, enabling it to easily fit within her hand—she noticed that she could understand the symbols on each side. On each side, there was marked a distinct eye, with a different colored gem for the eyeball. She turned it to the side with the blue gem for an eyeball.

"Person," a symbol above the eye simply read. Trying hard to think of what it meant began to give her a tickle of a headache. From her history books, she remembered the wizard, four hundred years prior that waged war on Guardia. It was from that and from talking to natives of the time that she knew of his existence. However, she found she could not place his name. The pyramid seemed to pick up on her trying to think of the wizard's identity. _Magus,_ it placed as a thought in her mind.

"That's right!" she quietly announced. "Magus!" A brilliant flash of light emitted from the very tip of the pyramid, lasting only a second in duration but bright enough to momentarily blind her. Exactly what had been different she could not tell, even when her vision returned. A sound from downstairs came to her ears; her father, wishing to borrow a wrench from her that she'd used, knocked on her room door and eagerly pushed it open.

"Lucca, could you let me borr…AH!" His unexpected outburst caused her to blink a moment. Her appearance hadn't changed from the morning, had it? He gathered his breath and pointed in her direction. "Lu…Lucca? Have you…taken an interest in…horror movies?" The question did not make right sense to her. Then, almost by accident, she looked at the image of herself in the mirror. And her facial expression instantly changed to match her father's. _My…my look changed! Was it really the artifact?_ The way she looked had drastically changed. Her outfit had changed into a dark-colored, caped outfit she didn't have before. The tone of her skin had now become as white as a sheet of unlined paper, and her ears came up to a point, making them look quite elfish. Her hair, once short length, now hung beneath her shoulders and had a navy shade of blue for a color. While her facial features and the physical structure of her body otherwise remained the same as her usual self, it provided for a very unique outward appearance nonetheless. She did not know precisely if Magus looked similar to the way she did now, but if he did, she looked like it. Much to her delight, her thoughts as well as most of her wants remained her own, save for the addition of much knowledge of magic use. "How'd you change your look so quickly?!" she tried to think of a way to answer his question, and landed on one option.

The truth.

She reached over to her bed and took the pyramid in her hand once again, and tossed it to her father. "This thing did it," she explained. Inspecting it gave him even more confusion than he initially started with. The symbols were in a language far too ancient to be read, yet he could understand them as if they were speaking to him. Did some ancient culture create a language that anyone could understand no matter what? Such questions didn't matter to him as he turned it to a side that had a pink gem for the eye's iris. Above the eye, the symbol read, "Object" or "Item." He could think of only one object. _Refined Coronite,_ he thought. The very tip of the pyramid flashed a brilliant light for only an instant. He noticed on Lucca's dresser next to him, lie a four kilogram chunk of Coronite crystal. The mere sight of such a rarity almost caused his eyes to glaze over as he ogled at it. He put down the artifact and took the crystal in his hand. From his prior knowledge, the Earth ran out of the stuff close to fourteen thousand years ago. It had been hugely harvested by extremely primitive civilizations that didn't have efficient ways of using its power, and inevitably it got used up far too quickly. Later cultures had the technology to use it far more effectively, but had almost none to work with. From knowledge of the mineral, Taban knew a small portion of the crystal he had could power all the kingdoms of Earth for at least a few dozen months. This provided him with another challenge.

"Uh, Lucca?" he said. She rolled her eyes, for she knew what he was going to say next. "If you're not into any bad stuff, I don't really care if you change your looks a little. I have a project to work on, so please don't bother me." She took the small pyramid off the floor where he'd dropped it, and held it in her hands. Scientifically, she figured if it did a few things, perhaps she could manipulate it to do more. She turned it to the side for "Person."

"Okay, artifact?" she questioned the object, not sure if it would do anything. "Now, for a person, I'm going to say Crono. Don't make me look like Crono, or give me his abilities, TAKE ME TO Crono. Understand?" It did not respond, just as she anticipated. "Right-y then." Closing her eyes seemed to be the best possible motive, so she did it. Then, opening them, she looked directly into the blue gem and whispered, "Crono." All at once, the room spun around while she maintained a motionless position, it carefully encircling around her like a merry-go-round. The instant before it stopped at a full hundred-eighty degree turn, the appearance of her room had drastically been altered, or as she otherwise suspected, she'd been teleported to his location. Instead of being in either his room or Castle Guardia, she stood at the doorway to a dungeon. She could see her punk-haired friend standing on the inside of the first cell, with two guards watching to make sure he didn't escape. The two guards, both ugly and decrepit as hell, turned in her direction.

"Is that the supervisor?" inquired one.

"Naw," answered the other, spitting on the floor disgustingly. "Just some goth chick." This warranted laughter from the other.

"Ain't it a bit early for Halloween, dear?" Although she pointed at the guard with intent to merely say her peace, a bolt of lightning came out and hurled the man against the far back wall, leaving quite an impression. The other guard hastily drew his sword and charged her, but using her magic, she thrust him against the other cell and ultimately, hurling him against the wall next to his partner. A quick press of the switch next to the cell opened the bars.

"What did you do to your hair and skin, Lucca?" he asked, then hastily ignored it at the sound of more soldiers approaching. "Never mind; explain later. We gotta get the hell out of here." The sound of nearing soldiers caused the two of them to take up running and not to slow down for anything. Crono looked momentarily at the object in Lucca's immediate grasp, not knowing whether or not it was a new invention of hers, a discovery, or if she simply had it given to her by her father. The fact that the very tip of it was glowing seemed to signal to him what he already knew; there was a problem.

"You wanna know what this is?" inquired Lucca, not slowing up as they raced past two shielded soldiers in their mad dash to escape. "I wish I knew. Just…materialized on top of my bed." The main entrance to the dungeon zoomed by in a hurry as they left the supervisor in a cloud of dust before he could see what went by him. He had buried himself in reading the document on his desk to see them anyway. Cold air met them as they whooshed past the door, quickly headed towards the sight of the very next problem; a large tank in the shape of a dragon rumbled out an opposing door. Staring at the newest foe in his path, Crono drew his sword. He'd have to fight, but also he had to remain careful due to the narrow path he currently stood on. One false move and he'd plummet quite a bit to his death.

"Go, Dragon Tank!" shouted the chancellor as he jumped up and down like a madman. "Go forth and crush those rebels!" Crono barely dodged an attack from the tank as he kept his sword at striking length. Lashing out at the vehicle, his sword managed only to be turned away at the surface. Right before he could land on his feet, a sharp movement of the tank's head slammed against his abdomen and threatened to hurl him off the edge. Fortunately for him, Lucca was there to grab him. Crono noticed, almost as an afterthought, a slight indentation that was barely visible on the head of the tank. Clutching his blade tightly, he leaped into the air and with a shout, brought it down to hit the indentation carefully in the middle. The force of the swing happened to be enough to cleave the head in two. Lucca, taking advantage of the situation, summoned a field of dark energy, and ensnared the tank in its torrent fury. Moving the field with her mind, she lifted the tank off of the walkway, then let it drop a thousand feet or so to shatter into a thousand pieces on the ground. There stood in their path at least a few dozen soldiers, but Lucca was able to push them aside with her dark power.

"There they are! Don't let them escape!" the soldiers' cries as the duo fled from the castle did not distract them from running. Carefully, the soldiers attempted to surround Crono and Lucca, and the girl prepared to send them flying with a surge of lightning.

"Stop this at once!" their attention turned to Marle, who strolled down the stairs. The king, a man who seemed to care quite more about his kingdom than his daughter, ambled down the stairs shortly after, to dispute his daughter's command.

"Nadia!" he cried. "You're supposed to act like a princess! These hoodlums are a threat to the kingdom and deserve to be punished!" Flabbergasted at his stubbornness, Marle turned to her father.

"But father! They're my friends!"

"Friends?! Don't be ridiculous! Guards, get them at once!"

Seeing an opening in between two guards, Lucca and Crono burst forth, pushing soldiers out of the way as they dashed out into the forest. Marle hastily left in pursuit, not wanting to stick around. Once the three of them were out into the apparent safety of the forest, the soldiers ran quickly into the area and formed a human wall, blocking their path. This action left the now-trio with only one direction; towards a dead end. With an enclosed field of trees quickly approaching, their options seemed to run out. A disturbance in the corner of Marle's vision caught her attention. The blue, swirling mass of time disturbance could only be one thing: a gate. In good time too; the soldiers surrounded the exit of the small enclosing.

"Now, there's nowhere to go," reminded the chancellor. "Guards!" Seeing one guard pounce in her direction, Lucca quickly pulled out the gate key and touched it to the edge of the gate, opening the portal to large enough for people to enter. Crono and Marle leaped into the time gate, and Lucca proceeded as well, except that a soldier latched onto her left foot the instant she entered the portal. Thus, the trio of time travelers had an unfortunate guest.

"What is this?!" screeched the guard, accidentally taken into the portal with the other three. "Are we dead?!" Lucca turned to him.

"No, you moron!" she shouted. "This's the time stream! We're going through time!" Shortly after speaking, a black hole in the stream opened up, and they were pushed in. They appeared high above what looked to be the ground, and before they could even shout, they were plummeting rapidly. The soft landing caught the better of their attention. "Wh…where are we?!" Lucca's question rang through the other three's minds as well. They stood in a platform that rested on a pillar that extended downward into infinity, with black emptiness surrounding them. Three distinct pillars of light streaked out from the ground, and a walkway led down to a main platform. They strolled down the path and saw a man, leaning against a pole, fast asleep. Marle reached up and pulled gently on his overcoat, startling him slightly.

"Ah, more guests!" he cheerfully announced. The man noticed the artifact in Lucca's hands, and his cheery expression drastically changed to a serious one. "Young lady! Do you realize what that is?!" She looked questioningly at the pyramid in her grasp.

"This…just seemed to materialize on my bed," she told him. "It seems to have a mysterious power."

"Before I explain the Artifact," he said, "let me explain where you are. This is the End of Time. All time periods connect here, and you arrived here because you traveled here in a group of four. You may visit your friends whenever you wish! But never can you travel time in a group larger than three. One must stay." This didn't please the unfortunate guard.

"Bull crap!" he announced, backing away from the man. "I'm not staying anywhere!" Slowly he backed away from four pairs of eyes watching him. He didn't know how the hell he got dragged into this conundrum, but he knew he was going to think of a way out. There seemed only to be one problem; he did not see he was backing towards a certain bucket.

"NO! DON'T FALL IN…" The old man shouted, hoping to get the guard to notice he was dangerously close to the bucket, but it was too late. Before he even realized it, the guard tripped and fell backwards into a time portal emanating from the bucket in the corner. "…the bucket… Oh no. He's probably dead now."

"What do you mean?" inquired Marle.

"In 1999, a creature named Lavos burst from the ground after millions of years of resting beneath the Earth, draining the planet's energy. In a single devastating incident, it annihilated every government, every city, on Earth. Only a few humans survived the massive onslaught. That bucket leads to the very moment before it escaped from the ground."

Hoping to change the subject, Lucca lifted her artifact to show the old man. He took it in his hand, and examined it carefully. "This thing," he explained, "was created at the same time as the universe itself, at the Beginning of Time. The Entity, the being that died creating the universe, fashioned this as a way of finding his replacement as ruler of time and space. However, two major components, which even I haven't seen, were crucial to its full power and have been lost to time. Find them and supposedly, you become a god." Crono, noting the artifact's power, took it in his hand. Of the four sides on the pyramid, two of them had become known. The side of "Person" enabled one to give commands relating to people. The side of "Item" or "Object" enabled one to give commands relating to physical items. The third side, as he saw, had a symbol directly above a eye that had an orange gem for an iris. According to Lucca, the symbol read, "Place" and the very last symbol on the fourth side read, "Idea."

Lucca thought it rather strange, then it hit her. "Wait a minute!" she shouted. "Person, Place, Thing, Idea! Four aspects of a noun!"

"I know," concurred the spiky haired warrior, "but why?" He looked on the bottom of the pyramid, and to his surprise, it had a symbol and an eye as well. But unfortunately, the gem for the iris had long since been lost. The symbol read, "Action."

"Nouns and verbs," realized Marle. "The entire universe is composed of nouns and verbs! People who live, places they go, things they gather, ideas they get, actions they do!"

"Brilliant," the old man acknowledged. "Whomever created this must be a wise individual indeed." The three remaining time journeyers looked at each other, then the artifact carried by Lucca. Crono seemed also to notice a rather unique symbol on the face of the tiny pyramid for "place." next to the archaic symbol, a separate one read, "time." A realization hit him.

"Hey guys!" he cried. "You see this?" Eagerly he pointed to the symbol. Lucca and Marle gazed at the symbol, and saw what he saw. Perhaps, they wondered, it would take you to any place at any time. Figuring out Crono's plan, they grabbed his left and right arm, respectively. Crono closed his eyes, pictured his house, and said, "My house, the moment after we went into the portal that brought us here." Just like when the genius of the group had saved Crono mere minutes prior, they stood still as statues while their surroundings whirled around like a top, changing to the immediate outside of his home when a 180 degree turn completed. However, many things looked to be different. For one, no longer was his house the clean, organized wood building it had once been. It stood nearly the same size, however it was a glass-and-metal covered dome. Secondly, outside the house and all over the village, robots rolled back and forth, searching for any who violated the laws. A small one with a rather unruly laser stopped, faced the three, and began to beep uncontrollably.

"beep Tell me at once why you're not in your house-dome! beep" it demanded.

"Uh, out for a stroll?" Marle's confused tone almost threw off the robot, but it didn't. Instead, the tiny droid beeped twice, turned its head around, and rolled on.

"beep Acceptable. Proceed. If you wish to speak with Lord Magus, he is resting and is not seeing visitors. beep" Marle and Crono looked at each other.

"Lord Magus?" they inquired in unison. Lucca gasped. "What's wrong, Lucca?"

"I…I know that name!" she yelled. Indeed, perhaps this was why the artifact's power over time warranted careful wording of wishes. Then again, she didn't ask SPECIFICALLY for Magus's appearance or power. "When I took the pyramid, I was just looking at the side for person, and I accidentally said, 'Magus,' and it made me look kinda like him and gave me his knowledge of magic in combination with my science. I guess at the same time, four hundred years ago, it made him kinda look like me and gave him my knowledge of science in combination with his magic, and he used the two to conquer the world!"

"But," argued Marle, desperately trying to swallow all the information given to her by Lucca, "you still kinda look like yourself…and don't you still know all you used to know about science?"

"That's the bizarre part. I DO still have my facial and physical features and my knowledge, but I know his magic. Freaky."

"We gotta change history," announced Crono. "If he did what you said he did, we have to do like we did when I saved Marle." Marle, having an idea, took the artifact from her scientist friend's grasp. She smiled and closed her eyes.

"Artifact," Marle carefully whispered, "take Lucca to the End of Time to practice her magic, then bring her back to this very moment in time when she's done." No sooner did Marle finish repeating her statement to the tiny gold pyramid, than did the Magus-like girl spin violently around, complete a full three-sixty, and stop. Lucca collected her bearings and faced the two. Although she knew it to be a moment's ordeal for them, quite a long time had passed since she last saw them.

"Wow," she merely resonated.

"Well?"

"Well," iterated Lucca, "I know it was an instant for you two. But, since you don't age at the End of Time, due to the fact that time stops there, I got forty thousand years' worth of training from Spekkio!"

"Spekkio?"

"You know, the door behind the old man? Spekkio's in there. He's the God of War. Oh, and did I mention? I got to see a lot of famous time travelers!" It was such an incredible journey for Lucca, that in the few moments of returning, there was no way she could describe all the wonders of magic she learned. She'd used the time guru's looking glass, and through it she was able to see wondrous things from all over time. She learned how to manipulate the pillars of light to go anywhere—not just where they were supposed to take you—and thus undid a terrible memory of her past. The guru did not allow her, unfortunately in her mind, to see anything regarding her friends' lives while she was gone. Perhaps it was for her own good, or their own good, but other than that, she had nothing bad to say about it. It was a wonderful experience.

Crono took the artifact in his hand, and looked at the side for place. Closing his eyes, he uttered, "Now, artifact, take me and Marle to the end of time to practice our abilities, and bring us back to this very moment when we're done." Lucca watched as her two friends whirled around a full rotation, stopping exactly where they'd been before they left. Somehow, she could see years of experience in their non-aged faces. She now was on equal footing with them in terms of experience.

"That was amazing," exclaimed Marle. "I never knew my forte was water magic! What was yours again, Crono?"

"Lightning," he explained with a smile. He took into account their strategy and brought to mind the thought of Magus having used Lucca's scientific knowledge to conquer the world.

The other two in his presence grabbed onto Crono. He looked at the pyramid in his hand.

"Artifact," he calmly stated with fire in his eyes, "take us to Magus, four hundred years ago. Before he took over the Earth."


	2. CHAPTER TWO

The Artifact

By Moonraker One

NOTE: Some parts of this chapter (i.e. Flea's defeat), are not for the kiddies.

CHAPTER TWO – A Gift Undeserved

Once the room finished spinning around, and slammed to a stop, the three warriors of time looked all around them at the dark, dank surroundings; they were obviously in the front entrance to what had to be a rather large castle or fortress of some variety. The eerie blackness suddenly found itself penetrated by a slightly pudgy, green presence. Two beady pairs of eyes focused on the three warriors as they attempted to gather their bearings.

"Who are you?!" demanded the rotund figure. Lucca forced her eyes into a squint slightly while she focused on him, his fat form floating in the air. Somehow she knew him; she realized she knew him from Magus' memories.

"Why don't you bugger off!?" she didn't hesitate to reply. She didn't care that he was floating high above the ground; she and her friends would not be afraid of Ozzie. "Let us through so we can kick the crap out of your master!" To this, the fat green servant of Magus only laughed.

"You think you're so tough because somehow you got my master's magic. Well, little missy, the clothes and the hair don't make the skill yours." With that, Ozzie summoned a small gathering of skeletal demons and sent them charging at the three. Not hesitating for an instant, Crono drew his katana and made a sharp swipe from where he stood; the shockwave of the swing traveled across the dark chamber and neatly blasted all the skeletons in two. Shocked but unfazed, Ozzie put more of his magic than before into the second attempt, summoning this time a veritable choir of skeletal demons with spears charging at the trio. Marle put her hands together and recited an incantation that she'd learned, opening her eyes with a flash of light emitting from them, and out of nowhere two gigantic blocks of ice materialized and flattened the creatures into dusty piles of bones. The green servant floating above the battle scene couldn't believe it; one of his most infamous spells defeated not once, but twice! This time was it; he channeled every bit of magical power he could, summoning a seemingly endless army of skeletal demons, closing in on the trio from all sides.

"CRONO!" shouted Marle. "I don't think my magic can do this! There's at least a thousand of them!" Crono knew his options weren't much better; his strongest magic attack would possibly drain all his magical power and leave him defenseless against Magus. Lucca was the only one to seem unfazed. Making several rapid hand signs, she suddenly drew a single index finger outward and thrust it high above her head.

"LIGHTNING 2!" bellowed Lucca. Bolts of pure electricity shot off of the tip of her finger and surged throughout every inch of the chamber, effectively incinerating all the skeleton creatures at once, barely missing Ozzie as he desperately dodged left and right to avoid the surges. Smoke permeated the room as bones and dropped spears began to shower the floor around her. Crono and Marle couldn't believe what they'd just seen, but the one most distressed by this change of events had to be Ozzie himself. He'd just used most of his magic trying to stall these three only to see them turned aside as if they were ants.

"Man," he whispered to himself. "I can't believe these wimps're this powerful!" With that, he did his best to escape, only to see both of his escape routes blocked by a last-minute ice shield courtesy of Marle. Suddenly he found that he was alone against three especially powerful beings of magic. "Crap…gotta think of something…"

"You're gonna take us to Magus or ELSE!" Marle instructed him. "Don't forget; we can barbecue you faster than you can blink!" Just as he was almost surrounded, he did the only thing he knew; encase himself in his nearly impenetrable shield of ice. "Arrgh! Don't think you've gotten away with this just because you sealed yourself up!"

Lucca threw a fire spell at the ice block, only for it to be turned aside. Trying again, she swung her fist at the shield of ice, but found out only that it caused her hand to hurt. Marle blasted it a few times with her crossbow, but the arrows were almost no match for the ice. Crono took a few swings at the block, and almost broke his sword without even making a single dent. Suddenly, he had a plan. With the tightest possible grip, he focused his mind on Ozzie's shield of ice while he slowly drew his sword back. His muscles tightened as he let out a loud warrior's shout and swung his katana with the force of a tornado. Even though he was aiming to crack the ice a bit, Crono didn't realize his own strength and thus, the shockwave from his sword swipe blasted the entire block of ice in two, Ozzie included.

"Uh, Crono?" Marle calmly uttered, "I think you killed him." Two pairs of eyes focused on her, then on the exit. Assuredly, they apprehensively entered the second part of the castle. Unlike the initial entrance, this section of the castle of Magus was teeming with the latest in technology. Robots rolled left and right, beeped and scanned, while a figure stalked down from the far back staircase. This one could easily be judged as a Mystic, for his rather unnerving sword at his side symbolized the fact that he had mastered the art of the blade. Eager to test his might, he drew his rapier and leaped down the tall stair.

"It is by the will of my master, Lord Magus," introduced the thing, "that you die here. My name is Slash, and I will now show you why that is my name!" Not a second wasted after introducing himself, the Mystic named Slash pounced in a semi-predictable style at the trio, holding his blade in a straight attack formation. Crono had been the valedictorian of his sword-fighting class during military school, so he perfectly had his opponent's attack analyzed in his mind in time to move to the side and parry with his own weapon. One of the main lessons he'd learned came in handy at this point; his opponent had a superior weapon, so the best way for victory to remain his own, he'd have to outsmart—and out-parry—Slash. Sure enough, his foe threw another series of predictable swings at him—almost to an avail.

"You fight quite well for a human," Slash continued.

Saying nothing, Crono blocked or dodged the Mystic's blows with upwards and downwards parries from his blade, waited for the opportune moment, and launched into his own counter attack. Using a stance unique to his particular style, the punk-haired warrior rapidly took ground away from his enemy, inevitably delivering a small cut to Slash's hand that caused him enough grief to drop his sword. Crono didn't hesitate to hold his weapon up to his enemy's throat. "Remind me why I shouldn't kill you," he warned.

"Lord Magus is up through that hallway," Slash caved in and explained. "You haven't seen anything 'til you've seen what's in store for you next." Having heard enough, Crono whacked the Mystic on the forehead with the handle of his katana, knocking him out. Smiling, he dropped his blade, picked up Slash's weapon, and replaced it into his own sheath. The trio then continued through the doorway—the robots, having been witness to the fight, computed it best if they left the time travelers alone.

Of the four sections of the fortress, this part obviously had the appearance of a dungeon. The robots of the previous section were here as well, with the possible addition of several new types that had to have been just recently created. Two of the three adventurers had their attentions focused on the exit at the far end, but not Lucca; she kept her vision glued to a bat, whose peculiar pattern of encircling them struck her as bizarre. Neither Crono nor Marle sensed anything unusual other than the obvious, but finally Marle turned to look at her friend.

"Lucca?" she finally asked, as seemingly countless robots kept their sensors active on the trio. "What's up with the bat that worries you?" Lucca said nothing, just kept her eyes on the creature. Suddenly, though, she put her hand on Marle's shoulder, bringing the trio's brisk walking pace to an abrupt halt. When the bat's flight slowed to a stop, some suspicion of Lucca's had been confirmed.

"Why don't you show yourself…Flea!" announced the goth-clad time traveler. The bat descended towards the ground, a spiraling column of energy swirling around it, changing its shape rapidly. By the time its feet touched the ground, no longer did it possess the shape of a bat. It had thus become…what looked to be a female magician. "I expected you to be cleverer than that."

"Yeah, well," the magician replied in a sharp tone. "My cleverness doesn't have anything to do with the fact that you're going to die."

"That woman looks like trouble," Marle replied. "Do you think we can take her out?"

Something in Marle's sentence offended Flea. "W…WOMAN?!" she shrieked, clasping her hands together in baroness style. "I'M A GUY!" Crono flinched to such a degree that he almost dropped his sword.

"_No way_!" he shouted. "She…He…has the shape and…ick…I don't even wanna think about it."

"You've made me MAD!" Flea screeched, and then magically summoned a rain of spears materializing out of nowhere and coming down in sheet-like patterns upon the three adventurers. Seeing an opportunity, Crono drew back his weapon and began to slash away at the spears, hurling fragments of wood and speartips in every direction. Quickly, he found out that he couldn't block them all, as a third of one ricocheted off his blade and implanted itself into Marle's shoulder. She screamed instantly as blood began to drip from her wound.

"GUYS!" Crono yelled. "There's too many!"

"HAHAHAHAHA! That's what you get for messing with FLEA!" Right before a spear would have gone straight through Lucca's forehead, a thick blade swung seemingly out of nowhere and cleaved the ball of magical energy in Flea's grip that allowed for the never-ending rain of spears, causing all remaining to dematerialize. "F…FROG?!" Quickly searching for something to use as a shield, Flea saw a little bit of fluid dripping from a pipe damaged by a spear, and called upon it to surround him. It seemed to be impenetrable, as Crono swung his blade but the ball of liquid surrounding the magician turned it aside like it was nothing.

"Frog!" Marle cried. "You came to help us!"

"Certainly, madam Marle," he said. "T'was a strange lack of activity arising from Magus' lair that stirred my suspicions. Came did I to find out what the cause was. I'm glad to see thou here."

Suddenly Lucca had an idea. _Wait a minute,_ she thought, taking a smell at a distance of the liquid shield. _That smells like…ethyl alcohol! If Magus has my knowledge of science, that's his fuel source!_ She correctly recognized the liquid in Flea's shield as the type of alcohol most often used as fuel. "Crono!" she shouted. "Strike at the pipe that's feeding his shield with liquid!" Immediately acting without question, Crono took a quick swipe at the pipe and cracked it wide open, spewing Flea with ethanol, just before a fail-safe system kicked in and shut off the pipe.

"ICK!" Flea uttered. "You've soaked me in this smelly stuff!"

"Goodbye, Flea," Lucca whispered. Summoning a ball of flame on the palm of her hand, she gave a fastball pitch, with the fireball sailing across the room and striking Flea directly in the chest.

"aaaaaAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" All watched in shock as the gender-confused Magician became a life-sized ball of flame. Fueled by additional spray that had leaked from the pipe before it was shut off, the fire burned until nothing was left of Flea but a tiny pile of ashes. Frog turned to Lucca.

"Won us this combat, thou did," he scolded, "but t'was a bit excessive and painful, methinks. Thou didn't need to make a roast out of 'im."

"Yeah, but imagine what he was planning to do with US," she reminded him, a thought which seemed to prove her point rather effectively. Quickly after they defeated the three servants, they rapidly headed upwards toward the main room where hopefully, they'd find a way to defeat Magus. As they went on, the robots behind them began to slowly encircle them. The team did their best to evade, but their maneuvers only brought more robots, until eventually they were surrounded.

"Team! We need to attack!" Marle cried. Crono smiled, and began to gather lightning on the tip of his finger.

"Way ahead of you," he said, and brought his right hand way above his head. In a second, hasty motion, he brought his hand down to the floor, and screamed, "LIGHTNING TWO!" Out of the ground, electric bolts shot, piercing the armor plating of each of the robots, hurtling them against the wall. A second later, lifeless hunks of metal began to shower the ground. Crono smiled at what he saw before him, as piles of demolished robots littered the floor.

"You're really good," a voice cried out from the room ahead as a giant steel door slid open. "I'm really glad you decided to come and play. I could use some help; thanks for destroying those robots." Thanks? Didn't they just demolish his only chance of taking over the world?

"The heck are you talking about?!"

"Please come in here now!"

Apprehensively, they all did as requested and entered the room. What they saw was shocking; Magus was there, and his looked like a male version of Lucca's previous appearance, but he was chained to the wall with a strange device literally sucking the knowledge out of his brain. "You're here to stop me, aren't you? You came from the future and you want to prevent me from ever taking control of the world, am I right?"

"Y…Yeah," stammered Crono, not sure what to say. He wasn't expecting the mage-turned-scientist not to be in complete control of his forces. "What's that?"

"Lavos," Magus responded quickly. "Don't _EVER_ forget that name." Suddenly, a new evil materialized out of nowhere.

"DON'T," it boomed, echoing a deep bass throughout the castle, "EVER FORGET ME!" They couldn't believe what they saw; a seven foot tall creature with a strange face, flipper-like hands and feet, and what looked to be armor on. Floating on the left and right of it were two mechanical-like orbs suspended in midair. "I'M LAVOS! AT LEAST THAT'S WHAT ANCIENT CULTURES CALLED ME!" He seemed to be linked spiritually to another living being, one buried deep within the Earth.

"You…YOU!" All of Lucca's friends turned to look at her. "LAVOS! You're DEAD!" With no effort, he raised one of his flipper-like hands and sent her into the far back wall with a small release of energy.

"I COULD KILL YOU ALL IN A SECOND," it continued, "BUT I NEED THE STRONGEST ENERGIES TO PERPETUATE MY EVOLUTION!"

"What the heck's he talking about?!" stammered Marle. "He's not making any sense!"

"He's part of a living spaceship. His body serves as the soul of it. With it he can travel to any planet and he manipulates that world's evolution to his own means."

"He _grows_ an entire civilization just to gain more power!?" The concept seemed so foreign to her friends. But through Magus's memories, she knew all about it. However, before another word could be spoken, a second shot from Lavos's hand sailed across the room. Not having time to think, Lucca threw up into the path of the beam the only object she had: the artifact itself.

"NOOOO!" Crono shouted. "That's our only ticket out of here!"

However, it did not shatter. What happened was completely unexpected. A giant bubble of energy surrounded all of Lucca's group and beamed them into a time warp.

"What is this?!" yelped Marle.

"A time warp," Crono answered. "I just wish I knew where we are headed." A distant white light became ever closer, until all they could see was brightness, and then…

THUMP.

They got ejected on the other end onto dirt.

"Kerekos! C'mere! I found some time travelers!" a voice called out. Looking around, Lucca and the gang noticed instantly that one, they weren't dead, and two, they were on a desert-like terrain. Crono took the golden pyramidal artifact in his hand.

"Where are we?" he whispered.

_Planet Nidelos, eighty-five billion years prior to your birth,_ it immediately answered. Its answer was unilaterally heard by all Crono's friends.

"Well, what do we have here?" a voice asked. "Humans." The four looked up, and instantly freaked out. Six presences surrounded them, each of them looking like variations of Lavos, only with different armor and without the floaty things nearby.

"Humans aren't allowed on our planet!" the leader of the group called out. "Take them to the prison, until they're ready to meet the High Lord Nidelos. AND CONFISCATE THAT GOLDEN PYRAMID!" They all wanted to fight, but found themselves outnumbered AND overpowered.

"Um, guys?" Marle inquired. "Any ideas?!"

"Yes," Frog responded. "Catch me whilst I faint."


	3. CHAPTER THREE

The Artifact

By Moonraker One

CHAPTER THREE – The Species Nekusos

Crono had only recently become aware of the ability to travel through the vast ocean that was time, and already was he beginning to wish he'd merely stayed in bed. Just two days' worth of normal time for him had been spent on this adventure, and already they'd spanned from the farthest possible reaches of the past all the way to the end of time itself. Now, eighty-five billion years' prior to his birth was the time Crono and his friends were in, and after being dragged by a strange people (all of whom happened to look like brethren of the Lavos creature) to a very dank looking prison cell, all present wanted their mothers. Frog, just one person of the group who happened to be chained to the wall, looked over at Crono.

"Crono?" he said. "T'was a great misfortune that got us 'ere. Shallst I borrow a phrase from your generation? This sucks." It didn't seem like Frog to speak in slang—especially slang from four hundred years in the future from his time—but Crono got the message.

"Yeah," he replied, "you can say that again."

"Didst you not hear me? I said this…"

Crono interrupted him. "I _HEARD_ you the _FIRST_ time!"

A booming voice from outside the cell shouted, "SHADDAP IN THERE! Don't make me have to separate you!" Crono and Frog immediately got quiet. From outside the cell, both could hear the sound of footsteps approaching, and within a few moments, a rather decked-out looking member of whatever species inhabited this planet, came up to the cell.

"Guard, you may escort them to the dining hall," he advised. "Do, however, keep them watched at all times."

"Yessir!" the guard quickly answered, and opened up the cell door. Taking his keys off his uniform, he hastily unlocked each of the time travelers' shackles. After they were freed, several additional guards came out of the hallway to escort the travelers to the dining hall. While Lucca and Marle were thinking about what fate awaited them once they got to the dining hall, Crono and Frog, being of the male gender, thought primarily of ways to destroy the guards holding them. On one hand, Crono knew his ability to launch magic, and the guards probably weren't expecting it, but on the other hand, Crono realized that there were more guards awaiting them ahead, and thus he decided not to risk it by attacking. After quite the long walk through the hallway, they entered a massive dining hall. To say it was grand would be an understatement; there were chandeliers (at least five of them, and they all were covered in gold plating), as well as gem-studded portraits of what had to be their glorious leader.

"Release them at once!" the most glamorously dressed of the gathering said. "These are not the evil time travelers we have been warned about. They are to be treated as our friends and will dine with us!"

One of the leader's subordinates protested. "Lord Nidelos!" he cried. "How do you know that they aren't the evil time travelers that we were warned about? And haven't you said that Humans aren't allowed on our planet?!"

"QUIET!" Nidelos boomed. "the golden artifact told us that these humans aren't our enemy. Let them dine with us. We shall—this applies to _everyone here_—treat them as friends." Crono and the rest of his group sat down at a table, where they were able to relax and enjoy a good meal for a change. Just looking around astonished him at the way there was so little physical diversity from one of these creatures to another. How they distinguished each other was a confusing thought.

Within a few moments, the meal came. Expecting it to be a rather uniquely disgusting dish, every member of Crono's party was amazed that their plates contained precisely what they considered their favorite food. "Wow!" Marle couldn't help but say out loud. "Peppered steak! My favorite!" In response, the leader himself walked up to the group to address the comment.

"You see, weary time travelers," he began, "the golden artifact you had used to belong to us, until a freak accident caused it to be sucked into a time portal. We have always used it to obtain information of the future, that's why no alien species has challenged our military. We tend to be able to win battles before we even fight them, simply because we have the info ahead of time." The leader walked out of their presence with a certain prideful swagger in his walk. Everyone seemed impressed with the importance of the artifact. Lucca, however, seemed to have a problem. She had her right fist clenched very tightly, and sweat was forming on her forehead.

"Lucca?" Frog asked. "'Tis there a problem?"

_I like the enchiladas on my plate!_ she mentally reasoned.

_I can't stand this foreign food, though!_ argued a separate mental voice. Lucca couldn't help it. On one hand, she could remember that food from the southern section of town was her favorite since she was little, but on the other hand, she could remember eating much more exotic food as a child…in the Zeal kingdom. The instant she realized this, her eyes flashed open: these were Magus's memories, his voice arguing with hers inside her mind, his soul fighting for control over her! She clutched her head in pain.

"LUCCA!" Marle screeched. "WHAT'S WRONG?!" Just then her hair flashed back to its previous purple color—then returned to Magus blue. She took a look at her hand; her pale white skin—from when the artifact gave her an appearance similar to Magus's, and his power—flashed back to normal and then back to white.

"It's Magus," she whispered. "In the year six hundred, he must have died when we changed history back there."

"Uh, Lucca?" Crono interjected. "We went there to change history, but Lavos sent us here instead!"

"What happened? You remember, don't you?" she scolded him, for not thinking. "He fired a blast at us, the artifact got in the way, and a giant portal sent us here. What if, a bolt of energy shot off the gate and killed Magus? Or, if Lavos having used some of his power against us, disrupted the flow and killed Magus that way? Regardless, with his body dead, his soul went to the only other connection to him."

Marle gasped. "You!"

Lucca nodded. "Right. And now, his soul is struggling with mine. I can't let him win! We have to get that artifact back!"

Hoping to find a potential strategy, the quartet finished their meal and exited the dining table. Crono himself, couldn't believe the sheer level of change that had occurred since the morning just the equivalent of two days ago. Just a few days ago, he had a semi-normal life, and in the blink of an eye, he suddenly became a fast-paced time traveler. Also, the friend he'd had since early childhood now had two different souls struggling for possession of one body. Last week, everything that had occurred would have struck him as richly bizarre. Frog, one of the best planners of the group, knew they had to get the artifact if they ever were going to have Lucca turn back to normal. There stood a number of severe obstacles; not the least of which was that an entire alien species had it under their closest surveillance. Of all the problems, he figured, the group he was in had to get stuck with one of the absolute hardest.

A servant of the leader came up to the group. Quickly noticing Lucca having a quandary, he offered, "She looks like she needs to lie down. In fact, why don't you all? I've been ordered by the High Lord Nidelos to make sure you have a room to sleep in. If you'll accompany me to the third room on the left, there's four cots set up for you all to sleep in."

"Thank you," Crono replied. "She's just a little under the weather." As the servant left, they quickly assembled in the room for some strategizing.

"What do you think we should do?" Marle asked. While waiting for the conversation to continue, she poured a tonic over her wound, causing it to heal semi-instantly.

"Well," Frog replied, "whilst you three were eating, I conversed with a member of this race, and found out that tomorrow there shallst be a huge reception in the dining hall where the artifact's return will be celebrated by its display. We merely have to snatch the golden pyramid tonight, whilst the guards be sleeping."

Crono accepted his plan as plausible, with one exception. "How exactly do you know they'll be asleep?"

"A constant vigil grows weary eventually, methinks. Nary can a soul stay alert forever." They all nodded; it was dangerous, and potentially a killer, but nevertheless, they had only it as a plan. "Dost thou like my plan?"

"Yeah, it's just great!" Crono sarcastically replied. "So all we have to do is _walk in and STEAL it_?! Certainly! Why didn't I think of that one before? I'll tell you why, because it WON'T WORK!"

"Well," Marle interjected, "it's the only plan we've got."

"Fine. So we wait until the coast is clear and then grab the artifact. What if it's in a sealed container or under a glass shield that'll set off an alarm while we're trying to break it?"

Lucca thought for a moment. She indeed hadn't been planning for that set of circumstances. She knew of three different types of traps that could be in place. One, there could be lasers that, if the beam was broken, set off an alarm. Two, the artifact could be inside a pressurized case, and the release of pressure would cause a trap to be activated. Three, the artifact _itself_ could be connected to the alarm system somehow, and the slightest disturbance of it would be problematic. In any of the three cases, there'd be a major problem if they were caught. However, she knew of no way to adequately alter the plan for any of the three situations, so all she could do was hope. A knocking on the door caused them all to almost jump; apprehensively, Frog answered the door. At the door stood a Lavos-like being of this planet, dressed in a suit of armor not unlike the space suit Lavos had on.

"Lord Nidelos would like to invite you over to see the pride and joy of our scientific experiments," he offered, handing a sheet of paper to the amphibian. "Due to the fact that we are currently involved in a six-species war for dominion of this sector of the galaxy, it may come into use if we are threatened enough." The one whose curiosity was piqued the most was Lucca, who despite the fact that her mind was divided between two separate souls' influence, maintained her interest in science. Crono wanted to go simply for the fact that if this was in fact Lavos's people—as he began to think—it would be useful to know their utmost secrets. Out of the simple fact that Marle and Frog wanted to be with their allies, they tagged along as well.

The hallways, all decorated with various pictures of the leader of this planet, Nidelos, were as unique as they were vibrant, and the group walked through it until they got to a door which looked as though it were made from solid gold. As it slid open, they saw the regally-dressed leader of the planet himself, and behind him a massive spike-covered meteor with a mouth-like opening at the front. Crono gasped and Lucca almost fainted, for they instinctively knew the energy coming off of the meteor to be what they felt from Lavos. The spiky rock behind them, which looked as big as a domed building, had to have been the living thing that the evil Lavos was connected to. Only it seemed like nothing was connected to it.

"W…what is that?" Crono inquired, desperately trying to hide the fact that he was fearful for his life.

Nidelos seemed to perk up. "Ah!" he exclaimed. "This is our scientists' finest work! Taking a meteor that was lifeless, and using our Spirit Device to inject a soul into it has made a being that can fly through space like a meteor, and fire weapons using magic itself as a weapon." Lucca shuddered; the magic she was sensing from the meteor had to be huge. A mage beyond compare had to have been sealed within it. "Potential to destroy an entire civilization in a mere moment, and I believe it even has potential to manipulate the evolutionary processes of a populace on a macroscopic level. Also, the person controlling it has potential to live eternally."

"And you…never thought that…someone might steal it?" Marle argued, trying to get the point across without explaining her story. Unfortunately, Nidelos picked up on her hints. His facial expression dimmed.

"Wait! You're time travelers, right? Does this creation of ours have some negative impact?" Crono wanted to burst out laughing at the degree of the understatement; instead he simply snorted a burst of air from his nose.

"Dost the name 'Lavos' ring a bell, sir?" Frog entered with. The name seemed to take the leader's breath away; he obviously knew the person in question.

"Lavos?!" he shrieked. "LAVOS?! WHY, Lavos is our greatest champion! He has lead us into countless victories! Our greatest hero!"

"Where we come from—which is billions of years in the future from this moment," Marle explained, "your 'hero' Lavos destroys the civilization from which we come; erases all hopes and dreams along with about ninety-nine percent of the populace in a single instant." Nidelos could not believe what he was hearing; surely, he figured, the time travelers had to have been mistaken.

"Why, I…I refuse to believe you!" he shouted. "You…you're a bunch of liars!" Marle almost forced a grin; this reminded her of her conversations with her father. Nidelos thought of one way for him to hear the truth, and he thought of it just as they were preparing to say it.

"Ask your artifact," Crono told him. "It is not capable of lying or manipulating the truth as it is."

"Why…I'm going to do just that to prove you wrong! Right now! Let's go!" With his command, he and the group of time travelers opened the door to exit the room, preparing to find the artifact in its chamber. However, blocking their path to exit the room was a familiar evil, only younger looking. Crono took one look into the eyes of the being and his blood ran cold. Lucca, with Magus's memories conflicting with her own, wanted to run out of fear and blast his head off at the same time. "LAVOS! Wh…what is the MEANING OF THIS?!" Lavos said nothing, merely lifting his energy saber and driving it into the heart of his leader. With a mild twist and a tug, the leader hit the floor with his life blood pouring out. Crono reached for his blade—and found it not there. It had been confiscated.

"One of you escaped with the meteor," Lavos explained, fabricating a story. "You, punk-hair, killed the High Lord Nidelos with a saber you stole from me during the feast," he threw his sword at Crono who caught it out of reflex, dropped the artifact on the ground, and then removed a couple of glove-like hand coverings which prevented his fingerprints from covering the handle of his sword, "and the three remaining members of your party were left behind before you could take the artifact with you."

"YOU FIEND!" shouted Marle, an instant before Lavos raised one of his flipper-like hands and crashed them all into the right wall viciously with a release of magic. As they all fell unconscious from the sheer velocity of the impact, he reached down and picked up Frog's shiftless form, vanishing and rematerializing inside the meteor.

_Are you my master?_ the meteor asked.

"Yes I am," Lavos replied. "Your power is mine; my name is Lavos."

The darkness of dreamland, in which Crono was in, suddenly found itself broken by a splash of water thrown in his face. Instantly he snapped back to reality, and found himself in a seated position staring at a rather unruly-looking member of Lavos's species. He jerked his leg in an attempt to stand, and found it chained to the floor; upon further inspection all of his limbs were chained, as were the limbs of his allies. The fact that they were on a moving, jumbling convoy didn't please him either. The creature looked down at the Human with silent contempt, but couldn't maintain silence much longer.

"I KNEW it was a mistake for our lord to take you humans in," the thing angrily stated. "Now look! You killed him!" He struck Crono across the face with his flipper-like right hand. "I say you killed Lavos too! We just haven't found him yet!" Crono glared at the creature, wanting desperately to spit on him.

"WE DIDN'T DO…" Crono wanted to shout in protest, but halfway through his sentence a swift kick in his groin cut him short, causing him to bend over and release a small pulse of spit in pain.

"SHUT UP! YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TALK!" The thing then lifted a cattle prod that was at his side and shoved it at Crono's chest, almost breaking the skin. The young time traveler let out a screech as sixty thousand volts coursed through his body. "You should be glad we're killin' ya in a humane way. Throwing you into a volcano, you pass out before you hit the lava. It's a two hour ride to the volcano. Try saying a prayer, or wetting your pants." The creature then walked on to deal with other prisoners condemned to die. On a more positive note, the punk-haired teen looked to his left, and saw Lucca—back to her normal purple-haired, tan-skinned self. Gone were Magus's features; Crono suspected that Lavos did it with the artifact so as to eliminate all possibilities of rebellion. But if Lavos indeed wanted to eliminate rebellion, there remained one target…

Crono thought of it a moment before it actually happened. From out of the sky, Frog plummeted to a crash landing in the sandy desert terrain of the planet they were on. He and the rest of his allies looked up, along with Lavos's people, to see the familiar, evil meteor descend from the upper stratosphere and come to a complete hovering stop. _No, he can't possibly…_ Unfortunately, he could.

And he did.

As all watched in horror, countless balls of yellow magic flame burst from the spikes of the meteor, and began to fall all over the surface of the planet, shattering high-rise city buildings and incinerating anything in their path. As if that were not destruction enough, the mouth of the meteor opened wide and a large white ball ejected from it, hitting the center of the primary city and neatly incinerating the whole metropolis with a nuclear-like blast. It then turned and did the same to every other of the seven major cities on the planet. Not even the very convoy the prisoners were on—being at least a hundred and seventy miles out of the city—escaped the yellow magical flaming orbs descending from the sky like deadly foul ball hits. The structure of the truck melted partially away from the first fifty hits, leaving a gaping hole in both sides and the top. If it were not for strong steel bands holding them, Crono and his friends, along with seventeen prisoners, would have left. From his high point in the sky, Lavos seemed pleased with his singular act of destruction, which had succeeded in the systematic annihilation of ninety-nine point nine percent of the population, and rocketed off into space, to continue the acts of destruction for eons to come. Lucca figured only her and those with her had survived; even the guards patrolling the convoy had been incinerated. Marle had a second-degree burn on her left leg.

"Errggh!" Lucca cried as she used what little magic she had left to yank the keys off the torched body of one of the guards. With it, she freed her compatriots. However, she felt they had no hope of escape. Until, that is, a familiar golden pyramid landed a few feet from her.

"Oh God, thank you!" she cried, picking up the artifact. "Never have I been so glad! Artifact, please take us to our home time!" She waited for them to spin around and appear home. Nothing happened, though, even after a few minutes.

"Um, Artifact?" Marle entered. "Pretty please?"

_I am sorry, my dear time travelers,_ it apologized to them. _Against the wishes of the one carrying me, I used up the last of my power protecting you from his onslaught._

"L…let me get this straight," she said, "you went against Lavos to come here and save us, and you have _NO_ power left to get us off this wasteland of a planet? _We're gonna die here?!_"

_Without a time gate, you are stuck here to perish. Please forgive me; I am but a mere artifact. I have no power but what is given to me, and what power I had initially is gone. It is sad; the Nekusos people are gone forever._ Lucca laughed as she resigned herself to fate.

"Just freakin' WONDERFUL!" she screamed, although no one was left to hear her. "Dying on some God-forsaken desert planet with no one left to hear our story, and no affect on Lavos's inevitable killing of our people!"

Crono looked all around him, and saw that lava from newly-aroused volcanic activity had surrounded them in a five-mile-in-diameter bowl-like crater in the desert. They were not even to die of starvation; the heat would incinerate them where they stood. Thinking about his unpreventable death, he took a few steps back, and while the rest of the sand was soft and gave way partially under his feet, he stepped upon something that made the sand more firm; something hard buried beneath its surface. Marle noticed him turn around and begin to dig with his hands.

"What did you find?" she said as he rifled through the sand with his bare hands, pushing aside mounds of the desert terrain for a few feet down, until he found a box. The lava inched ever closer, but his resolve didn't fade until he found a dark box buried. He opened it, and found…nothing. Nothing, that is, save for two small gems. One of the gems: one of the gems was black, the other was white. He wondered what they were for…until he grabbed the pyramidal artifact.

"Artifact!" he shouted. "Can you tell me if these gems go on you?"

_They do, Crono_, it had replied, _But do you know where to put it?_

Taking the black gem in hand, he placed it into the bottom eye of the pyramid, into the slot where the gem had been gone from. When he did so, the entire artifact seemed to pulse with a white light for a moment. It sparkled in his hand, and the tip of the pyramid opened up, revealing a compartment where a very tiny gem stand still stood upright. He held it close to his face, and gingerly lowered the white gem into the tiny stand. Upon replacing the gem into the stand, the tip slammed shut, threatening to snap his finger had he not pulled it away in time. At the top of the pyramid, a white light far brighter than any previously seen almost blinded them, for it lasted a whole minute.

"CRONO!" Lucca shouted, for even though the light prevented her from seeing, she felt the lava mere feet from them. After her sentence, though, the light vanished, leaving them with the scenery of before. Nothing had changed with the planet, except the lava was almost upon them. Her eyes felt so heavy…she just couldn't stay awake any longer. Thus, she fell to the ground into a blissful slumber. Marle noticed that their clothing had slightly changed, but also was so exhausted she fell into a snooze and tumbled to the ground. Crono could only smile as he was ready to meet death in sleep as he went down as well. Frog already had fallen into a state of slumber. They were too into dreams to notice that an invisible sphere of energy had formed around them, protecting them as the lava roared over the force field, entombing them in a protective sphere beneath at least a mile of lava.

"This, my children, is the Shrine of the Four Sleepers," a woman said, showing her class around the tomb. She'd been to this shrine numerous times over her extensive career as a teacher, and could never properly understand herself why these people never aged. "We discovered them beneath the legendary lava flows of olden times, during the archaeological digs of a hundred years ago. The crust beneath which they were buried dated back no less than a billion years ago, long before our civilization was in its infancy, even." The class oo-ed and ah-ed as they watched the four blissfully absorbed in dreamland as they lay within their own individual glass cases. At this point, her fellow history teacher chimed in.

"The legendary Four Sleepers emit a constant stream of energy that will never end," he informed the class, "and they do not age. Their souls are unaffected by time's influence, their bodies impervious to its ravages, and no mortal weapon can pierce their flesh. We believe they rule over existence even as they sleep away the millennia."

"Mrs. Lakka," one of the small students asked, "where did they come from?"

"Ah, they were time travelers," she explained. "They came to this planet a billion years ago from a point far in the future, and were stranded here after the ancient culture of the Nekusos who'd inhabited the planet before met with a cataclysmic demise."

"Mrs. Lakka, wasn't it the mythical creature Lavos that annihilated his people?" A separate student entered.

The other teacher gathered his years of knowledge on history and replied, "Lavos was a Nekusian who'd been corrupted by power and destroyed his people out of greed. The Four Sleepers are said to one day put a stop to his evil ways, for he is somewhere in deep space."

One small girl almost leapt back in shock as she screeched, "Yaahhh!" Instantly both teachers turned to her.

"What's wrong, Eliza?!" shrieked Mrs. Lakka, attempting to figure out what was wrong.

The girl pointed at Crono as though he were an awakening beast. "He's…he's looking at me!"

"Now, Eliza, certainly you don't believe…aaaahhhh!" The other instructor attempted to dispel her statement, but when he saw Crono open his eyes, reach out and touch the glass, he dropped his water bottle and almost fainted. When the punk-haired time warrior realized he was inside a glass case, he turned to the nearest person to him, the museum curator.

"Let me out of here!" he ordered. The museum curator turned immediately to one of his workers.

"Do as he commands!" shrieked the curator. The man's language seemed so foreign to Crono, yet his mind was able to translate it as though it were English. A question came to Crono's mind, and it was immediately followed by an answer.

_How long was I out?_ Crono asked.

_One billion years,_ his own voice replied inside his head. _Still, you're eighty-four billion years behind your first birthday. Nevertheless, you aren't affected by time any longer._

_Why not?_

_Because you have transcended it._

As the glass case lifted, swiftly followed by the cases covering his three allies, he noticed primarily that Frog had been returned to a human form, and secondly, that their clothing was exactly the same except for the presence of a golden pyramid symbol on the front of their shirts, and golden capes attached to them. Stepping out onto the floor, he looked around to see everyone present kneeling before him.

"Stand up," he said. "I don't have to be considered anything special." Marle and the other three joined him.

"Crono, what's going on?" she asked. Lucca could not think of an answer either.

"Beats me," Lucca said, speaking for the unelected team leader. "I wake up to find I'm in a case in a museum, a long time away from home." As the group nervously got to their feet, he approached the male teacher; he instantly stood at attention.

"Oh, all-powerful one," he stated, "I am not worthy to stand in your presence!"

"Where are we?" Lucca asked.

_The kingdom of Rinata, the civilization of Humans that lived after the Nekusian people all died._ The answer to all four had come simultaneously inside their minds.

"We're the people of the kingdom of Rinata and its surrounding villages," the teacher answered. None of the time travelers understood what was going on, nor did they realize that a terrible conspirator was lurking just around the corner. Waiting in the darkness outside the solar system surrounding planet Nidelos, was a familiar evil just waiting for his chance to return for more destruction.


	4. CHAPTER FOUR

The Artifact

By Moonraker One

CHAPTER FOUR - All Hail Lord Crono

Not a single face in the shrine at that moment was without a sheer look of incredulousness. The two instructors, along with their history classes, were the first in a billion years to witness the awakening of the legendary Four Sleepers. If the stories about the legendary sleepers were accurate, both teachers knew that the four confused time travelers in front of them held the one key to eternal life and youth, as well as never-ending power. Several of the kids, whom never had a chance to see the four before, still were just as amazed, for they were seeing a sight that many generations before them had longed for and never achieved. Countless generations had waited for the day their mythical four finally awoke, and the group in the room got to see it.

"Um, all-powerful ones?" one of the shrine employees mustered the courage to say, making his presence known. "May I be so bold as to…ask what your names are?" His supervisor mildly smacked him on the shoulder.

"Michael!" he rasped in a whisper. "Do not be so impetuous in the presence of holiness!" Crono shook his head as he turned to the supervisor.

"Oh, don't worry," the time warrior said. "He's okay. I'm Crono, and my friends are Lucca, Marle, and…" _Glenn_, the voice in his head answered, "Glenn." Glenn, the real, human form of Frog, looked to his fellow traveler with a "how'd you know that" look. He already knew the answer, of course, for any question the time travelers wondered about instantly got answered. "But hey, if you don't need us or anything, we've got business to deal with…" One of the instructors quickly moved in front of Crono as he stepped towards the door, with a plea for him to stay.

"No, we understand, you having to destroy Lavos like the legends say," she hastily hammered off, "but please stay just a bit longer! We can learn so much from you!" Lucca had a question of her own as she stepped in front of her punk-haired friend.

"If you're a technological society, I'd like to see if I can help…" she offered. The other instructor, having minored in computer science in college, took it upon himself to interrupt Lucca mid-sentence with a counter-offer.

"Oh, we're really struggling to find a clean, inexpensive power source, Lady Lucca! Could you please help us?" Before he could finish explaining, Crono saw her flash one of those "I'm-there" looks. He smiled at the thought of her telling them the secret to a limitless power source that was cheap and non-polluting, but he instantly foresaw the inevitable conclusion of such an action. Before she even left the building, she turned to her fellow time traveler and the look on her face signified that she knew it as well.

_Lucca_, he warned her.

_I know,_ she telepathically replied. _If I just give them the secret, they'll annihilate themselves. That's why I'm not going to just tell them. I'm gonna…give them a little push. That way, they won't find the final answer for at least another four thousand years. You think that's enough time for their primitive mind to adapt?_

He nodded, and she left the room. Marle and Glenn approached him. They had a question on their minds that Crono shared. They each had begun to sense the presence of people's souls. It felt like a twinge at first, but a few moments after waking up, they began to feel an energy fluctuation that represented the souls of each living thing. A thought began to make itself known within all of them; they didn't know what they should do with their newfound power. Should they allow nature to maintain its present course, or should they become the deities that everyone worshiped during the course of their lives? It was a big question, and it seemed as though no one could more adequately answer the question than someone they'd met at the end of time.

"Crono, I'm not really the one you should ask," Gaspar said to the young time warrior as he and his allies stood in the middle of his platform, staring at him with confusion in their eyes. The door behind him, leading to Spekkio's chamber, flung open. Something walked out; something they hadn't normally seen. Although, while he was inside his own chamber, he looked like his final Nu form, once he stepped out of the chamber, his form shifted, taking on the appearance of a man garbed in an ordinary-looking suit.

"Crono," Spekkio said with a tear in his eyes. He was looking at a sight he thought he'd never see. "I can scarcely believe what I'm staring at. I mean, before, you were just a plain kid with a radical haircut, and now, look at you. You're the one, the alpha and omega, the almighty one, you're…god, in the sense that most people believe. As are your friends."

"Spekkio?" Marle half asked, half stated. She thought a minute; in the language of the populace she'd just left behind, his name meant something. "Your name means…means…"

"Entity," Spekkio answered. "Yup. The one that created it all." He stretched his arms out as wide as they'd go. "I made everything there is. And I knew what I wanted every minute of everyone's life to be before I even began the process of creating the universe. Fate, in essence, I wrote. There was just one problem."

"Not even you had the power to do both the creation of all things and the implementation of fate, right?"

He pointed at her. "Wrong! I could very easily have implemented fate. I could have said, 'okay, here's how I want it to be,' but that's not what I wanted. I wanted mortals to decide their own fate, with nothing written for the time being except time itself, the only thing written being that time has no end. Technically, there is no beginning either, because something is limited only when compared to something else."

"Whoa whoa there," Gaspar cut in, "what're you talking about?"

Spekkio turned to his friend. "A planet's size is limited when compared to the size of the limitless universe. A man's lifespan is limited when compared to the expanse of time. Time itself has nothing to be compared to; how can you declare it limited? I've always existed, as has time." He turned back to the four time travelers. "When there was nothing except a blank, black canvas with nothing inside of it, I was only a gathering of energy in a limitless void. When I decided that there should exist other life, I declared that relevant time had begun, which means that everything before that point had been irrelevant, due to the fact that there was no life." He motioned to the platform upon which they were standing. "There is nothing here save for our platform which stretches downwards into infinity. Again, since time cannot end, this is the point in time which all relevant history has ended, and the age of nothingness has begun again. I linked all periods of relevant history to this point, due to the fact that as long as life exists, the natural timeline will always stop short of this point."

Crono shook his head. "That…doesn't answer my question."

Spekkio took the hint. "Ah, you want to know what you should do." He thought a minute. "Kill Lavos; what else can you do?" He thought some more. "After you do that, just make sure this point in time, where all relevant things in existence have passed out of it, never happens in real life. Watch after Heaven and all the other realms in which spirits walk once their life has passed. Just be happy." With a clap of his hands, he sent them back to a thousand A.D..

* * *

While they stood on a plane of existence high above the one that the Earth rested on, watching down upon the planet they'd been born on, they each looked at each other, and the limitless expanse of white that comprised the part of reality they were standing in. A large orb in front of the four displayed the events of the planet Earth, and the rest of space where they were, expanding outward infinitely in all directions, was nothing except pale blank whiteness. They both knew and didn't, what this place was. It was the part of existence that was Heaven, and yet it wasn't. The truth was, it was where Heaven was going to be, once all four decided upon what it was to be. Each had their own unique visions of what it should be, and they all had their own mental pictures of how it was to look and be. Marle, thought that Heaven should be a place that consisted of grassy plains, sparkling rivers and bountiful fruit trees on a flat expanse of land that stretched infinitely towards each horizon, and thus had enough space for every being in existence. Glenn, pictured the holy realm as the place in your life where you were the happiest ever, and that moment lasted for all eternity; nothing except the single happiest moment ever. Lucca had a unique vision of heaven that it was a place where you simply existed in a state where you had no questions in your mind that were unanswered; you could roam freely amongst the fellow dead in perfect harmony, because nothing was unknown, and all the secrets of the universe were open to you at any moment. Crono had the old-fashioned notion that his mother had taught him: heaven was a café, a small diner that had an infinite amount of booths, and you could sit at any moment and eat with any being who'd died, never having to pay or worry about food running out, just limitless conversation and spending time with anyone. He'd loved to picture such a heaven when he was younger.

"So, now that we're…" Marle hesitated to overstate the truth, "…special…" Crono interrupted.

"We've been given a special gift, Marle," he stated. "Now that we have it, we have to use it properly. I say the first course of action is to decide upon what to do with Heaven here."

Lucca had a serious question which she would have interrupted with, had her own mind not answered it for her immediately. _Where are all the souls that have died until this point_? She would have asked.

_Nowhere,_ the answer was. _Heaven exists outside the time stream of the physical universe. Essentially, you could say Heaven always exists _before_ the physical universe came into being_._ No one has died until the final decision on Heaven is finalized._

Marle seemed flabbergasted. _So, everyone who's died goes NOWHERE until we've decided?!_

_Wrong,_ her mind corrected. _Remember, this place always exists before the physical universe, so by the time the first mortal has died, you've already long since created Heaven._

"Hast anyone amongst us decided upon the holiest of holy places?" Glenn inquired. Crono smiled as he turned to his former amphibian friend.

"It is very near impossible to get four different people to decide upon one, final conclusion," he informed them, for which they already knew, "and even when that happens, we can never be fully happy about it. So," he thought of a way to put into words the only inevitable conclusion, "how about it be all of these things at once?"  
Lucca raised an eyebrow. "You mean, like, we all get our own Heaven, and mortals can switch between them merely at will?"

"It is the only way we can all agree," Marle reasoned, "and it's the only way we can get all the mortals who end up here to be happy. Here's the kicker though; on the rules on how to get to heaven, we cannot be flexible. There must exist only one truthful way. I say we do it the moral way of letting in mortals who've repented."

"I say we do it the old-fashioned way and simply judge them all ourselves," Crono said.

"What?!" Glenn almost jumped backwards. "Dost thou realizeth that if we did that, it would requirest all of our time?"

"That's a problem? We've got all the time in existence. Time is no issue."

"But," Marle argued, "that would require us to subject mortals to the unfair laws of nature!"

"Nature's done a pretty good job thus far."

"How can we answer people's prayers, judge the living and the dead, _AND_ intervene in certain cases? You always hear of God intervening in someone's life!" Crono pulled her closer to him.

"If _ONE ENTITY_," he stressed the point as severely as he could, "could do each of those things in _ONE MOMENT_, surely _FOUR OF US_ can do it in an _INFINITE_ period of time."

Before any of them could possibly go about agreeing on anything, a flash of light and they were back at the end of time, staring at a Spekkio who'd changed from his ordinary-looking suit into a grand outfit that was all-white, quite a contrast to the dark background that was the empty universe at the end of time. He was crying as he placed his hands on the shoulders of Crono and Marle, who just happened to be next to each other. He wiped his eyes and returned his hand to her shoulder. "I'm absolutely touched that you'd be willing to take on a burden far too big for the meek human mind to contemplate," he said through a faltering voice, "but I simply cannot place such a terrific task upon you, especially when you have such fulfilling lives to lead." With a single snap of his fingers, he reduced the four back to their mortal selves. Gone was their limitless knowledge and power, and their bodies were back to where they were before Crono completed the artifact. "Please, go back to your own times and live out the lives you want." He suddenly remembered something. "Oh, and take this with you." He handed them the artifact, once again surging with power. "I've filled it with enough power to avert personal tragedies for the rest of your lives, and remade it only to do such things. It cannot be removed from your possessions; consider this my final parting gift."

"And of Lavos? You said for us to kill him," Crono inquired.

Spekkio shook his head. "I'm the Entity, punk-hair, and erasing him from being would be beneath me. Rather, I shall remake him, place his soul at the moment of birth into a different body that will have an impact far, FAR less than he has in his current one. I merely wanted to test you and see if you'd accept this power I allowed you to have and I wanted to know…to know if you'd do the same thing I did. I HAD to know I wasn't wrong to make four distinct varieties of Heaven but only one way to get there." He shook his head. "Forgive my ramblings. Go, and remember to visit me anytime!" As his frame slowly morphed back into Nu form, due to the fact that the time travelers were mortal again, he clapped his hands before the change was complete, and the four were back in their own time; a thousand A.D., near a time portal that would take Glenn home. They looked around; gone were the glass-and-metal domes that had been before; in fact, everything was back to good old Guardia Kingdom. Only one thing was strange.

"Lucca," Marle had wanted to ask her scientist friend why she could see an aura around her, but her voice came raspy and almost not at all. _What's wrong with my voice!?_ she said within her mind.

"I don't…" Crono said with a faltering voice. He clapped his hands over his mouth. _I don't know Marle,_ he mentally projected, _but I've got it too!_

_Totally bizarre_! Lucca spoke with her mind. _We can talk telepathically, but not easily with our voices! It's like…_ She thought of the only logical explanation.

_You're right,_ Spekkio interrupted, sending his voice from the End of Time. _Lavos. Without him here to stop it, evolution took its natural course, and Humans evolved into telepaths. You can still use your voices, they just need a little practice._

_Glenn, I guess this is goodbye,_ Crono said, drawing in closer to hug his fellow time-traveler. _You're quite a friend to have._

_Crono, you need to feed the cats_, Glenn's reply was. His punk-haired friend, upon hearing his mother's voice come from Glenn's mouth, jolted back in confusion.

_What the hell was that?!_ he shouted. Glenn smacked him.

_Now you wake up and don't you use that foul language again!_

As he drew backwards to contemplate what he was hearing, a violent shake instantly drew Crono out of his sleep. He looked at the wall and then to his mother, standing over him as he lay in bed. _No WAY!_ he thought. _It was all a dream?!_ He looked at his mother again, who went to the window and pulled it open.

"Today's the first day of the Millennial Fair!" she announced verbally. "You were so excited that you didn't sleep well, did you? Get up and at 'em!" He whipped his head left and right; _none of it was real_?! When his vision went to his bedside, he saw an object sitting there on his dresser.

It was a golden pyramid, surrounded by eyes on all its sides. He smiled and looked toward his ceiling, as though a certain presence was hovering above him.

On a familiar platform, a familiar old man turned to a young-looking man in a grand, all-white outfit. A grin was painted on both their faces. Gaspar playfully smacked the young man on his back. "Now you're just showing off, Spekkio!"

"I know," Spekkio said to his old friend, "but even though it's for him, it's what _I'VE_ always wanted; to one day just wake up from it all, and have my life be ordinary once again, no matter what that meant. No problems, no difficulties, just an ordinary life."

Gaspar bowed his head. "Even though you gave him a wonderful gift of living normally again, you do of course realize that it won't affect you here, Spekkio?"

Spekkio bowed his head; yes, he'd known. He'd always longed for it, and never got it. He was The Entity, The Creator, The Giver of Life, and The All-powerful and Ever-Living God; he could never get it. He'd eternally have to endure the universe's most prestigious curse. "I know, Gaspar." He headed for his chamber behind the Guru of Time. "I'm going to take a nap, then get back to watching over existence. Good night Gaspar."

Gaspar stopped his friend mid-stride. "Tell me, though, Spekkio, why'd you test him like that?"

Spekkio walked towards his friend and put a hand on Gaspar's shoulder. "I…I had to see if any mortal had the divine spark within them. That's why I killed those people, Gaspar, I had to see if anyone had that divine spark."

Gaspar offered his condolences. "It must've hurt, Spekkio, knowing you had to kill your own creations in order to test a mortal."

Spekkio fought off tears. "It hurts me, the images I burned into my memory by doing what I did. And seeing the results made it unbearable." At this point, Spekkio could handle it no longer, and burst into tears. Gaspar held him in an embrace more akin to a mother consoling a child. "Despite the fact that I've made it all just a terrible dream, the events of that Day, and made it so the event never happened, it still hurts. It still aches my mind for the images of a Day that now, never happened at all. Well, a short sleep and I'll get back to watching over everyone. Good night, Gaspar. Oh by the fates, I wish for forgiveness."

Gaspar looked to his best friend, the all-powerful God Spekkio. With a tear in his eye at the pain the master had to endure, he bowed his head.

"Good night, Lavos."

THE END


End file.
